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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
(Not to play Devil's advocate, but Wiki is getting better at sorting the wheat from the chaff...)
0
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@person said:
I'm trying to make a distinction between acceptance of baseless claims and openness.
Would you not agree that all claims without proof are by definition baseless? People believe them for various reasons, not least social pressures, but when you really start to examine things you often find they don’t make much sense.
I think I'd also say that it is possible a supernatural claim may have some basis in reality but the particular interpretation is off the mark.
I’m not saying that all supernatural claims should be regarded as humbug, after all if someone making a supernatural claim can tell us how to experience these things then it is worth considering. But just telling a scary ghost story is not going to do the trick.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:
I'm trying to make a distinction between acceptance of baseless claims and openness.
Would you not agree that all claims without proof are by definition baseless? People believe them for various reasons, not least social pressures, but when you really start to examine things you often find they don’t make much sense.
I wouldn't and I think you also say as much in what you say next.
I think I'd also say that it is possible a supernatural claim may have some basis in reality but the particular interpretation is off the mark.
I’m not saying that all supernatural claims should be regarded as humbug, after all if someone making a supernatural claim can tell us how to experience these things then it is worth considering. But just telling a scary ghost story is not going to do the trick.
I think there are many stories that come out of some sort of experience of the world rather than being made up whole cloth.
0
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
Perhaps but wouldn’t you agree that there is a big difference between considering something if someone pointed you at a path to achieve the experience, and believing them outright? For me that is all the difference in the world.
The point being, there may be stories that come out of some form of experience of the world, but there are many more stories that are entirely made up. Psychiatric wards around the world are full of people experiencing mostly the latter, as are the tales of drug users and con-men.
0
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
For me it isn't an either or situation. There's at least a third basket, if not an infinite amount of baskets, between accepting and discounting an idea.
@Kerome said:
You can’t prove a negative, but there is no need to accept the absurd. There is the famous case of Russell’s teapot — Bertrand Russell posited the existence of a teapot in orbit around the sun between the Earth and Mars, and said that just because someone said they believed in the teapot, no sensible person would believe them.
But there's not no reason to believe in God, is there? And I say that as someone who doesn't. The teapot analogy from Russell reminds me of Paley's watch analogy. Paley compares the world to an intricate watch. We clearly assume that watches have designers, so why not assume the same about the world? (He does put it more eloquently, to be fair.)
Now I don't think the world is so clearly the product of intelligent design as a watch, but I think it's much closer to the mark than a teapot in space. Russell's analogy wants us to see the idea of God as ridiculous, but it just isn't as ridiculous as he makes out.
2
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited August 2019
Weeelll... there is a reason not to believe in God. Believing comes at a price, which is obeying Gods representatives on earth. All kinds of things not to do, for fear of being punished in Hell. Tithing ten percent of your income to the Church. That kind of stuff. And also the subtler psychological penalties, such as not knowing the truth, trusting in things that don’t exist, and so on.
I never was very convinced by the watch argument, or the eye argument. My take on it is this: the world is so complex, made of so many intricate living parts right down to the DNA that governs them, that no intelligent mind ever could make it, not even God’s. That’s why I think Russell is right, and the very idea of a father figure in the sky that made it all up is ‘ridiculous’. Just consider the amount of mental compute power it would need, you’d probably need a mind the size of the universe to create the universe. It just makes no sense.
I think the idea of the Christian God is something that arose out of a need for primitive man to have a protector, someone to watch over him. It’s not something that could come from the patterns of nature all around us, it’s more likely that the early prophets suffered from psychosis and this was the best story that fit their imaginings.
It would seem both practitioners (secular & traditional) see experiential understanding as important when it comes to understanding the Dharma...however one just seems to go a bit further than the other when it comes to having faith in the mystical side of Buddhism eg Buddhist deities, levitation and the like...
As it stands ...what's true for one practitioner may not be true for another practitioner and vice versa.......where the mind's eyes don't see eye to eye.... so to speak...
But one thing I do know from personal experience (experiential knowledge)...there is real magic in the mind ( the mind moves in mysterious ways).... a magic eye I (and no doubt many other Buddhist practitioners) have yet to fully tap into..... A place where natural can become super and super becomes the norm ...hence why we practice...
2
personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited August 2019
@Kerome said:
I think the idea of the Christian God is something that arose out of a need for primitive man to have a protector, someone to watch over him. It’s not something that could come from the patterns of nature all around us, it’s more likely that the early prophets suffered from psychosis and this was the best story that fit their imaginings.
There's an idea called dual inheritance theory, the way I understand it is it says our culture evolves in much the same way that physical evolution occurs. That certain cultural features get selected for based on their suitability to sustain themselves.
In this Hidden Brain podcast called Creating God they talk about the origins of religious ideas and see how they were important and positive developments:
For most of human history, we lived in small groups of about 50 people. Everyone knew everybody. If you told a lie, stole someone's dinner, or failed to defend the group against its enemies, there was no way to disappear into the crowd. Everyone knew you, and you would get punished.
But in the last 12,000 years or so, human groups began to expand. It became more difficult to identify and punish the cheaters and free riders. So we needed something big — really big. An epic force that could see what everyone was doing, and enforce the rules. That force, according to social psychologist Azim Shariff, was the popular idea of a "supernatural punisher" – also known as God.
Think of the vengeful deity of the Hebrew Bible, known for sending punishments like rains of burning sulfur and clouds of locusts, blood and lice.
"It's an effective stick to deter people from immoral behavior," says Shariff.
For Shariff and other researchers who study religion through the lens of evolution, religion can be seen as a cultural innovation, similar to fire, tools or agriculture. He says the vibrant panoply of religious rituals and beliefs we see today – including the popular belief in a punishing God – emerged in different societies at different times as mechanisms to help us survive as a species.
Then he goes on to say something to the effect that with the development of lawful, democratic societies perhaps the social need for punative gods to watch over people's behavior is lessened.
From what I gather, we practitioners have many tools at our disposal to further our mental development and well being ie for progressing along the Path, ( for example tapping into the wholesome qualities 'mind states' that the Buddhist gods & goddesses represent) we just need to learn how to use these tools wisely/correctly....
The aim it would seem is to gradually become the tool.... but not to become a "tool" ...so to speak
I think the idea of the Christian God is something that arose out of a need for primitive man to have a protector, someone to watch over him. It’s not something that could come from the patterns of nature all around us, it’s more likely that the early prophets suffered from psychosis and this was the best story that fit their imaginings.
The Christian God isn't the only one out there (Greek, Norse, Egyptian etc). The Norse people for example, were quite pragmatic compared to the Abrahamic and Egyptian "prophets".
I get what you're trying to say, but you're using a narrow field for a generalisation .
1
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
A: I believe Jesus is our Lord B: Good for you. I can walk on water. A: Prove it. B: I don't need to, you read it right here.
"It's only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away..."
Couldn't have put it better myself, Barry...
1
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@Kundo said:
The Christian God isn't the only one out there (Greek, Norse, Egyptian etc). The Norse people for example, were quite pragmatic compared to the Abrahamic and Egyptian "prophets".
I get what you're trying to say, but you're using a narrow field for a generalisation .
Perhaps, but if you look at a lot of the earlier pantheons of gods, they were later superseded by monotheistic religion. Greece became Orthodox Christian, Scandinavia became largely Protestant, Egypt became Muslim.
The movement to science and a more mystical, true awareness of religion that I feel will come after a monotheistic population becomes more rational and less greedy is moving ahead in some areas, and in other places lags behind. Certainly Egypt is a long way from letting go of Muslim principles, they still seem very much caught up in the mode of thinking of “do this and Allah will reward you, do that and Allah will punish you”.
@Kerome said:
Weeelll... there is a reason not to believe in God. Believing comes at a price, which is obeying Gods representatives on earth. All kinds of things not to do, for fear of being punished in Hell.
I didn’t really mean that actually. I agree 100% that there are good reasons not to believe in God. However, there are also some reasons to believe. One of those is the argument from intelligent design, and even if that doesn’t count as proof for you (as it doesn’t for me either) it’s still more plausible than a teapot spontaneously occurring in space. I think Russell’s analogy is a false equivalent, straying into reductio ad absurdum.
In my opinion the best thing for us to do, as newcomers to a tradition that does include metaphysical elements, is to hold the arguments for and against in an equally unattached manner, until one of them starts to seem emotionally true to us. When that happens, I think it’s ok to go with the flow.
Does that make any sense?
And further to your last post about Islam, I would take issue with the idea of progress being to move away from monotheistic religion. A friend of mine is reading Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College right now, and he’s a deeply spiritual guy. I’ve got to say I think, “do this and Allah will reward you, do that and Allah will punish you” is a huge oversimplification of that relationship.
4
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@adamcrossley said:
One of those is the argument from intelligent design, and even if that doesn’t count as proof for you (as it doesn’t for me either) it’s still more plausible than a teapot spontaneously occurring in space. I think Russell’s analogy is a false equivalent, straying into reductio ad absurdum.
However, I find Russell’s analogy does shed a certain light on our thinking, once stripped of sympathetic social conditioning there is something absurd about God. Giving you an unconditioned perspective is part of what the analogy is intended to do.
And given a scientific view of the physical world and how it evolved, there is nothing in nature that requires a Christian-style creator God. Hence I don’t think of that God as at all plausible — rather I am aghast at how our ancestors could accept as real something so manifestly and extremely unlikely.
In my opinion the best thing for us to do, as newcomers to a tradition that does include metaphysical elements, is to hold the arguments for and against in an equally unattached manner, until one of them starts to seem emotionally true to us. When that happens, I think it’s ok to go with the flow.
Does that make any sense?
I do wonder if emotional truth is the best way to judge these things. From a subjective point of view it might carry weight, but from a rational view it might get you into trouble. Perhaps you might feel drawn to one god but not the rest of the pantheon. Then you would have a quandary.
And further to your last post about Islam, I would take issue with the idea of progress being to move away from monotheistic religion.
Well, in many places in Europe and even the US the Christian religion is losing ground quite fast. The main beneficiaries are the ‘spiritual but not religious’ movement. So it seems to be the direction things are going, when you have a secular education and are not indoctrinating the young with forced beliefs. However, a lot of minorities still tend to send their children to special religious schools, which I feel is a shame.
I have written a reply three times to try to remain succint and on point. I think I failed. But I DID want to address one point you made @Kerome . And I sincerely hope it comes across in the spirit it is intended - which is one of offering a different outcome to what you perceive to be the one out there.
You seem to portray theists as greedy, stupid/ignorant and hell bent on indoctrinating the future in their beliefs - this is a summary, in my words from your previous posts.
It's an interesting viewpoint there. I went to a religious school and spent more time studying other religions (including Buddhism) than the religion of the school (Christianity/Catholicism). My daughter has just completed her high school education and she went through a Uniting Church primary and secondary school where they had philosophy and ethics instead of "religious indoctrination". Out of all of my alumni from school that I keep in touch with in some form or another (around 50 people), only about 10 identify as Christians - and only 3 devout/attend church regularly.
Of all of the members on this forum, a significant number of regular posters here have admitted a Christian background, and they no longer believe, practise or follow the faith.
We all put forward our views/opinions/thesis from out points of view. But they can change. When I joined the forums back in December 2009, I was a theist practising Buddhism. My past posts on here can attest to the ferocity of my clinging to my beliefs, then me starting to relax them. Now, I am agnostic. You may find you detest God, Christianity and theism now, maybe over time you will be more compassionate to it. Personally, I found I got "stuck" and frustrated until I just let that shit go and focused on the Dharma and the Buddha's teachings, not a gazillion interpretations mostly with ulterior motives.
_ /\ _
4
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
It seems that despite my care I still didn’t word things gently enough. I wouldn’t say I detest theists, that’s far too strong. I try to make sure I detest nobody, and have compassion for everyone. I don’t think anyone deserves to be detested, whatever they’ve done.
But I do find theist beliefs unreasonable, and will debate in favour of letting those things go and not passing them on to the next generation.
@adamcrossley said:
A friend of mine is reading Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College right now, and he’s a deeply spiritual guy. I’ve got to say I think, “do this and Allah will reward you, do that and Allah will punish you” is a huge oversimplification of that relationship.
It is a simplification, yes. I do have some substantial reservations about Islam based on some investigating of the Koran that I did. It wasn’t very thorough, but I did notice a lot of waging war on the unbelievers and putting them to the sword and them going to hell. I didn’t find it a very sympathetic book.
But it’s a whole huge civilisation. What are you going to do? And I do like the sufi’s a lot. In the end people are allowed their own views.
@Kerome said:
It is a simplification, yes. I do have some substantial reservations about Islam based on some investigating of the Koran that I did. It wasn’t very thorough, but I did notice a lot of waging war on the unbelievers and putting them to the sword and them going to hell. I didn’t find it a very sympathetic book.
The hadiths are a later addition to the Koran and are quite violent compared to the rest of it. But this is true of the Christian Bible and other holy writings too.
But it’s a whole huge civilisation. What are you going to do? And I do like the sufi’s a lot. In the end people are allowed their own views.
This is true. I guess it's of particular meaning to me over the past two days as out here in Australia we had a guy run through our CBD in Sydney and stab a woman in the back in broad daylight (as well as previously having slit a girl's throat in her apartment about an hour beforehand). The facts as presently known are that he is of Turkish/Cypriot background, a drug addict who had self presented at a hospital admitting he needed help 5 days prior and - the one everyone is focusing on the most - a self confessed convert to Islam and obsessed with the Christchurch shooting and killer. He mangled the shehada when he was arrested and tried to shout Allahu Akhbar when he was arrested and now every racist, troll and islamaphobe in Australia is whipping up hysteria and hatred.
Now, I'm Jewish and when a Jewish woman gets married (as I did in December), the orthodox women cover their hair (it's called tznius /modesty) and the options are to either wear a sheitel (wig), hats (which I often do) or tichels (scarves) and tichels are my default preference. I've often copped comments or slurs from ignorant wankers who don't know that there are other religions besides Islam who cover their hair - even a reasonable number of Christian women do this. But in the past two days I have been wearing hats only. The day the stabbing happened, I got a door literally slammed in my face due to me wearing my scarf.
Now you could use this situation and say "This illustrates my point about theism being unreasonable as true" and I can equally say "This point illlustrates why generalisations are a bad thing" - and we'd probably both be correct at this time.
I think that as long as we can see differing points of view and more importantly, understand why some people hold them, that's a step in the right direction.
Comments
(Not to play Devil's advocate, but Wiki is getting better at sorting the wheat from the chaff...)
Would you not agree that all claims without proof are by definition baseless? People believe them for various reasons, not least social pressures, but when you really start to examine things you often find they don’t make much sense.
I’m not saying that all supernatural claims should be regarded as humbug, after all if someone making a supernatural claim can tell us how to experience these things then it is worth considering. But just telling a scary ghost story is not going to do the trick.
I wouldn't and I think you also say as much in what you say next.
I think there are many stories that come out of some sort of experience of the world rather than being made up whole cloth.
Perhaps but wouldn’t you agree that there is a big difference between considering something if someone pointed you at a path to achieve the experience, and believing them outright? For me that is all the difference in the world.
The point being, there may be stories that come out of some form of experience of the world, but there are many more stories that are entirely made up. Psychiatric wards around the world are full of people experiencing mostly the latter, as are the tales of drug users and con-men.
For me it isn't an either or situation. There's at least a third basket, if not an infinite amount of baskets, between accepting and discounting an idea.
This expresses my notion of human knowledge.
But there's not no reason to believe in God, is there? And I say that as someone who doesn't. The teapot analogy from Russell reminds me of Paley's watch analogy. Paley compares the world to an intricate watch. We clearly assume that watches have designers, so why not assume the same about the world? (He does put it more eloquently, to be fair.)
Now I don't think the world is so clearly the product of intelligent design as a watch, but I think it's much closer to the mark than a teapot in space. Russell's analogy wants us to see the idea of God as ridiculous, but it just isn't as ridiculous as he makes out.
Weeelll... there is a reason not to believe in God. Believing comes at a price, which is obeying Gods representatives on earth. All kinds of things not to do, for fear of being punished in Hell. Tithing ten percent of your income to the Church. That kind of stuff. And also the subtler psychological penalties, such as not knowing the truth, trusting in things that don’t exist, and so on.
I never was very convinced by the watch argument, or the eye argument. My take on it is this: the world is so complex, made of so many intricate living parts right down to the DNA that governs them, that no intelligent mind ever could make it, not even God’s. That’s why I think Russell is right, and the very idea of a father figure in the sky that made it all up is ‘ridiculous’. Just consider the amount of mental compute power it would need, you’d probably need a mind the size of the universe to create the universe. It just makes no sense.
I think the idea of the Christian God is something that arose out of a need for primitive man to have a protector, someone to watch over him. It’s not something that could come from the patterns of nature all around us, it’s more likely that the early prophets suffered from psychosis and this was the best story that fit their imaginings.
It would seem both practitioners (secular & traditional) see experiential understanding as important when it comes to understanding the Dharma...however one just seems to go a bit further than the other when it comes to having faith in the mystical side of Buddhism eg Buddhist deities, levitation and the like...
As it stands ...what's true for one practitioner may not be true for another practitioner and vice versa.......where the mind's eyes don't see eye to eye.... so to speak...
But one thing I do know from personal experience (experiential knowledge)...there is real magic in the mind ( the mind moves in mysterious ways).... a magic eye I (and no doubt many other Buddhist practitioners) have yet to fully tap into..... A place where natural can become super and super becomes the norm ...hence why we practice...
There's an idea called dual inheritance theory, the way I understand it is it says our culture evolves in much the same way that physical evolution occurs. That certain cultural features get selected for based on their suitability to sustain themselves.
In this Hidden Brain podcast called Creating God they talk about the origins of religious ideas and see how they were important and positive developments:
Then he goes on to say something to the effect that with the development of lawful, democratic societies perhaps the social need for punative gods to watch over people's behavior is lessened.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=628792048
From what I gather, we practitioners have many tools at our disposal to further our mental development and well being ie for progressing along the Path, ( for example tapping into the wholesome qualities 'mind states' that the Buddhist gods & goddesses represent) we just need to learn how to use these tools wisely/correctly....
The aim it would seem is to gradually become the tool.... but not to become a "tool" ...so to speak
I believe in God ... just for fun, just as I believe in the flying teapot and Her Holiness the Flying Pasta Dish ...
https://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/arminnavabi/why-there-no-god-quick-responses-10-common-theist-arguments
The Christian God isn't the only one out there (Greek, Norse, Egyptian etc). The Norse people for example, were quite pragmatic compared to the Abrahamic and Egyptian "prophets".
I get what you're trying to say, but you're using a narrow field for a generalisation .
A: I believe Jesus is our Lord
B: Good for you. I can walk on water.
A: Prove it.
B: I don't need to, you read it right here.
"It's only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away..."
Couldn't have put it better myself, Barry...
Perhaps, but if you look at a lot of the earlier pantheons of gods, they were later superseded by monotheistic religion. Greece became Orthodox Christian, Scandinavia became largely Protestant, Egypt became Muslim.
The movement to science and a more mystical, true awareness of religion that I feel will come after a monotheistic population becomes more rational and less greedy is moving ahead in some areas, and in other places lags behind. Certainly Egypt is a long way from letting go of Muslim principles, they still seem very much caught up in the mode of thinking of “do this and Allah will reward you, do that and Allah will punish you”.
I didn’t really mean that actually. I agree 100% that there are good reasons not to believe in God. However, there are also some reasons to believe. One of those is the argument from intelligent design, and even if that doesn’t count as proof for you (as it doesn’t for me either) it’s still more plausible than a teapot spontaneously occurring in space. I think Russell’s analogy is a false equivalent, straying into reductio ad absurdum.
In my opinion the best thing for us to do, as newcomers to a tradition that does include metaphysical elements, is to hold the arguments for and against in an equally unattached manner, until one of them starts to seem emotionally true to us. When that happens, I think it’s ok to go with the flow.
Does that make any sense?
And further to your last post about Islam, I would take issue with the idea of progress being to move away from monotheistic religion. A friend of mine is reading Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College right now, and he’s a deeply spiritual guy. I’ve got to say I think, “do this and Allah will reward you, do that and Allah will punish you” is a huge oversimplification of that relationship.
However, I find Russell’s analogy does shed a certain light on our thinking, once stripped of sympathetic social conditioning there is something absurd about God. Giving you an unconditioned perspective is part of what the analogy is intended to do.
And given a scientific view of the physical world and how it evolved, there is nothing in nature that requires a Christian-style creator God. Hence I don’t think of that God as at all plausible — rather I am aghast at how our ancestors could accept as real something so manifestly and extremely unlikely.
I do wonder if emotional truth is the best way to judge these things. From a subjective point of view it might carry weight, but from a rational view it might get you into trouble. Perhaps you might feel drawn to one god but not the rest of the pantheon. Then you would have a quandary.
Well, in many places in Europe and even the US the Christian religion is losing ground quite fast. The main beneficiaries are the ‘spiritual but not religious’ movement. So it seems to be the direction things are going, when you have a secular education and are not indoctrinating the young with forced beliefs. However, a lot of minorities still tend to send their children to special religious schools, which I feel is a shame.
Rational or Emotional.. To be or not to be.......
"When the intellect ventures into where it does not belong, it becomes lost in its own confusion"
...But it's also a case of....
A middle ground has to be found
I guess this is also why both secular & traditional Buddhists are on the same Path ...to develop Wisdom & Compassion and to find the balance ...
Quite possibly ... it also happens to be my starting point ... 🤪
The ability to stray into:
needs to be middle way balanced by:
In other words, don't believe everything you appear to know, think, feel or have incidental karmic predispositions for ... 😇
I have written a reply three times to try to remain succint and on point. I think I failed. But I DID want to address one point you made @Kerome . And I sincerely hope it comes across in the spirit it is intended - which is one of offering a different outcome to what you perceive to be the one out there.
You seem to portray theists as greedy, stupid/ignorant and hell bent on indoctrinating the future in their beliefs - this is a summary, in my words from your previous posts.
It's an interesting viewpoint there. I went to a religious school and spent more time studying other religions (including Buddhism) than the religion of the school (Christianity/Catholicism). My daughter has just completed her high school education and she went through a Uniting Church primary and secondary school where they had philosophy and ethics instead of "religious indoctrination". Out of all of my alumni from school that I keep in touch with in some form or another (around 50 people), only about 10 identify as Christians - and only 3 devout/attend church regularly.
Of all of the members on this forum, a significant number of regular posters here have admitted a Christian background, and they no longer believe, practise or follow the faith.
We all put forward our views/opinions/thesis from out points of view. But they can change. When I joined the forums back in December 2009, I was a theist practising Buddhism. My past posts on here can attest to the ferocity of my clinging to my beliefs, then me starting to relax them. Now, I am agnostic. You may find you detest God, Christianity and theism now, maybe over time you will be more compassionate to it. Personally, I found I got "stuck" and frustrated until I just let that shit go and focused on the Dharma and the Buddha's teachings, not a gazillion interpretations mostly with ulterior motives.
_ /\ _
It seems that despite my care I still didn’t word things gently enough. I wouldn’t say I detest theists, that’s far too strong. I try to make sure I detest nobody, and have compassion for everyone. I don’t think anyone deserves to be detested, whatever they’ve done.
But I do find theist beliefs unreasonable, and will debate in favour of letting those things go and not passing them on to the next generation.
It is a simplification, yes. I do have some substantial reservations about Islam based on some investigating of the Koran that I did. It wasn’t very thorough, but I did notice a lot of waging war on the unbelievers and putting them to the sword and them going to hell. I didn’t find it a very sympathetic book.
But it’s a whole huge civilisation. What are you going to do? And I do like the sufi’s a lot. In the end people are allowed their own views.
The hadiths are a later addition to the Koran and are quite violent compared to the rest of it. But this is true of the Christian Bible and other holy writings too.
This is true. I guess it's of particular meaning to me over the past two days as out here in Australia we had a guy run through our CBD in Sydney and stab a woman in the back in broad daylight (as well as previously having slit a girl's throat in her apartment about an hour beforehand). The facts as presently known are that he is of Turkish/Cypriot background, a drug addict who had self presented at a hospital admitting he needed help 5 days prior and - the one everyone is focusing on the most - a self confessed convert to Islam and obsessed with the Christchurch shooting and killer. He mangled the shehada when he was arrested and tried to shout Allahu Akhbar when he was arrested and now every racist, troll and islamaphobe in Australia is whipping up hysteria and hatred.
Now, I'm Jewish and when a Jewish woman gets married (as I did in December), the orthodox women cover their hair (it's called tznius /modesty) and the options are to either wear a sheitel (wig), hats (which I often do) or tichels (scarves) and tichels are my default preference. I've often copped comments or slurs from ignorant wankers who don't know that there are other religions besides Islam who cover their hair - even a reasonable number of Christian women do this. But in the past two days I have been wearing hats only. The day the stabbing happened, I got a door literally slammed in my face due to me wearing my scarf.
Now you could use this situation and say "This illustrates my point about theism being unreasonable as true" and I can equally say "This point illlustrates why generalisations are a bad thing" - and we'd probably both be correct at this time.
I think that as long as we can see differing points of view and more importantly, understand why some people hold them, that's a step in the right direction.
My 0.02